• Arden L. Bement, Jr., '63, is director of the National Science Foundation and former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
• Tony Fadell, '91, created the iPod. He is senior vice president, iPod Division, Apple.
• Clarence "Kelly" Johnson, '32, '33, is considered one of America's greatest aircraft designers. He established the legendary Lockheed Skunk Works and created such classic aircraft as the P-38, the F-104, the U-2, and the SR-71 Blackbird during his 40-year career.
• Bill Joy, '75, is co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Fortune magazine has called him the "Edison of the Internet."
• Thomas Knoll, '82, '84, is co-creator of Adobe Photoshop.
• Jeff Masters, '82, '83, '97, co-founded the Weather Underground, the most widely translated weather Web site in the world.
• Kevin O'Connor, '83, is co-founder and CEO of DoubleClick Inc.
• Larry Page, '95, is co-founder of Google, the world's most popular Internet search engine.
• Mary L. Petrovich, '85, is chief executive officer of AxleTech International.
• Claude Shannon, '36, is considered the father of information theory.

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Media

• Bill Flemming, '49, was one of the original announcers for ABC-TV's "Wide World of Sports." He also announced 11 Olympic Games for ABC.
• Robin Givhan, '88, is the fashion editor for the Washington Post. She won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2006.
• Cathy Guisewhite, '72, is a cartoonist and creator of the long-running comic strip "Cathy."
• Daniel Okrent, '69, is a writer and editor who was the public editor for The New York Times. He is the author of Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center.
• Walter Shapiro, '70, is an award-winning political columnist and writer whose work appears in USA Today. He has written for Time, Newsweek, Esquire, and the Washington Post.
• William Shawn, '25-'27, was editor of The New Yorker for 35 years.
• David C. Turnley, '77, and Peter Turnley, '78 are twin brothers and award-winning photojournalists. David won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1989.
• Mike Wallace, '39, is a longtime correspondent for TV's "60 Minutes."
• Roger Wilkins, '53, '56, was a journalist with the Washington Post. He shared the 1973 Pulitzer Prize with Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward for his editorials about President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal.
• Daniel Zwerdling, '71, is a correspondent for National Public Radio. His broadcasting awards include the DuPont, Peabody, Edward R. Murrow, the Investigative Reporters and Editors and the Robert F. Kennedy awards for investigative reporting.

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Medicine/Science

• Keith L. Black, '78, '81, is a neurosurgeon known for his pioneering work in treating brain tumors. He is chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
• Alexa Canady, '71, '75, is the country's first African-American female neurosurgeon. For almost 15 years, she served as chief of neurosurgery at Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit.
• Benjamin S. Carson, '77, is a pediatric neurosurgeon and director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University. He is the first physician to successfully separate twins joined at the head.
• Kathryn Clark, '90, is NASA's chief scientist for the Human Exploration & Development of Space Enterprise. She previously was chief scientist for the International Space Station Program.
• Sanjay Gupta, '90, '93, is chief medical correspondent for CNN and associate chief of the Neurosurgery Service at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital.
• Jerome P. Horwitz, '50, was an organic chemist who in 1964 synthesized AZT in 1964, a drug now used to treat AIDS.
• William J. Mayo, 1883, was a physician and co-founder of Mayo Clinic.
• Antonia Novello, '74, was the first woman and first Latina to be surgeon general of the United States.
• John Clark Sheehan, '38, '41, was a chemist who pioneered the first synthetic penicillin breakthrough in 1957.
• Kimberlydawn Wisdom, '82, '91, is the surgeon general of Michigan. She was the nation's first state surgeon general and was appointed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2003.

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Nobel Laureates

• Stanley Cohen, '48, is the co-winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering growth factors in human and animal tissue.
• Jerome Karle, '44, is a physical chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project. He shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1985 for "outstanding achievements in the development of direct methods for the determination of crystal structures."
• Marshall W. Nirenberg, '57, shared the 1968 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work uncovering the role of messenger RNA in the protein synthesis process.
• H. David Politzer, '69, is a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He shared the 2004 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the nuclear force that binds together quarks and holds together the nucleus of the atom.
• Richard E. Smalley, '65, was a chemist who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the co-discovery of carbon clusters known as fullerenes.
• Samuel C.C. Ting, '59, '62, is a physicist who was awarded Nobel Prize in physics in 1976 for "pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."
• Thomas H. Weller, '36, '37, shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in medicine for his research on the polio virus.

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Performing Arts

• Gavin Creel, '98, was nominated in 2002 for a Tony Award for his role in "Thoroughly Modern Millie." He also appeared in "Bounce," a musical by Stephen Sondheim, and the movie, "Eloise at the Plaza."
• Chip Davis, '69, is the founder of the music group Mannheim Steamroller, which has sold more than 36 million albums.
• David Allen Grier, '78, has appeared in TV's "Chocolate News," "In Living Color," "Life with Bonnie" and "DAG." He has appeared onstage in "Dream Girls" and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum."
• James Earl Jones, '55, appeared in "Field of Dreams" and "A Clear and Present Danger." He was the voice of Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" series and also appeared onstage and in the film, "The Great White Hope."
• Lucy Liu, '90, has acted in TV shows "Ally McBeal," "NYPD Blue" and "ER." She was also in the movies "Charlie's Angels," "Payback," "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" and "Chicago."
• Strother Martin, '47, was an actor in such movies as "Cool Hand Luke," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," and "True Grit," and "The Wild Bunch."
• Bob McGrath, '54, played Bob was on TV's "Sesame Street."
• Jessye Norman, '68, is an acclaimed opera singer who has won four Grammy Awards.
• Jack O'Brien, '61, '62, is a Tony Award-winning Broadway producer of such hits as "The Full Monty" and "Hairspray."
• John Rich, '48, '49, directed some of TV's most popular shows, including "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "All in the Family," "Newhart," and "The Brady Bunch."

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Public Affairs

• Mary Frances Berry, '66, '70, is the former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. She served on the Commission under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
• Clarence Darrow, 1878, was an attorney for the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" and the Leopold-Loeb murder trial.
• Gerald R. Ford, '35, was the 38th president of the United States.
• Richard Gephardt, '65, was majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 to 1995. He represented Missouri and was a former Democratic presidential candidate.
• Tom Hayden, '60-'61, is an activist who has served in the California State Assembly and State Senate. He was a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society.
• Nancy Landon Kassebaum, '56, was a U.S. senator who represented Kansas from 1978 to 1997.
• Valerie Jarrett, '81, is senior adviser to President Barack Obama.
• Amalya Lyle Kearse, '62, is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
• Ken Salazar, '81, is the U.S. Secretary of the Interior and a former U.S. senator from Colorado.
• Raoul Wallenberg, '35, was a diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust by giving them Swedish passports during World War II.

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Sports

• Red Berenson, '62, '66, played professional hockey for the Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings. He has led the U-M hockey team to two national championships.
• Tom Brady, '00, plays quarterback for the New England Patriots. He has twice been named Super Bowl MVP and the 2007 NFL MVP.
• Janet Guthrie, '60, was the first woman to qualify and compete in the Indianapolis 500 and the Daytona 500.
• Tom Harmon, '41, was a football player, Heisman Trophy winner and sportscaster.
• Desmond Howard, '92, was an NFL football player and a Heisman Trophy winner.
• Micki King, '65, won an Olympic gold medal for diving in 1972 and is a member of the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.
• Branch Rickey, '11, was president and general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was instrumental in bringing Jackie Robinson to the major leagues and breaking the color barrier.
• Cazzie Russell, '64-'66, played in the NBA with the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers.
• Rudy Tomjanovich, '70, is a former NBA all-star and coach who also coached the gold medalist USA men's basketball team in the 2000 Summer Olympics.
• Charles Woodson, '97, is a cornerback for the Green Bay Packers and a Heisman Trophy winner.

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Writers

• Christopher Paul Curtis, '00, is the author of the children's books Elijah of Buxton and The Watsons Go to Birmingham: 1963, both of which received Newberry Honor Book awards.
• Judith Guest, '59, wrote Ordinary People. The novel was made into an Academy Award-winning movie directed by Robert Redford.
• Lawrence Kasdan, '70, '72, wrote the screenplays for "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Big Chill," "Grand Canyon" and "The Accidental Tourist."
• Jane Kenyon, '70, '72, was a poet whose collections include From Room to Room, The Boat of Quiet Hours, Let Evening Come, and Constance.
• Elizabeth Kostova, '04, is author of the bestseller The Historian.
• Ross MacDonald, '42, '52, wrote the hard-boiled detective mysteries featuring Lew Archer. MacDonald was a pseudonym for Kenneth Millar.
• Arthur Miller, '38, was one of the great playwrights of the 20th century and wrote award-winning dramas "Death of a Salesman," "The Crucible," and "Playing For Time." He received the Pulitzer Prize for "Death of a Salesman."
• Susan Orlean, '76, wrote The Orchid Thief. The novel was made into the movie "Adaptation."
• Betty Smith, '21-'22, '27, '31, wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
• Chris Van Allsburg, '72, is the writer and illustrator of The Polar Express, Jumanji, and The Wreck of the Zypher.

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